Welcome back to our weekly survey of the state of Our National Dialogue, which, of course, is what Strauss would have come up with had he written Also sprach Kowabunga.

First of all, the Credentials Committee For Political Panel Shows has determined that the Hawaiian Shirt Barrier officially has been breached. (Who in the hell was drunk at the switch at MSNBC anyway?) George Effing Will should feel free to rock the Aloha any time. Wait, no...

Anyway, it was Bill Clinton Day among the gobshites, but we begin on Dancin' Dave's Disco Dance Party, if only because his panel was such a clustery mix of chewy fk that we're all going to be picking pieces of it out of our teeth for months. I mean, seriously, Squint Scarborough, Brooksie, and Bay Buchanan? That's the entire conservative intellectual gamut from A to Zany. They did not disappoint. But first, an appeal from our host....

A note to our viewers now, a question that comes up a lot. We have a long standing invitation for President Obama to appear on this program and share his views about this important campaign, and we hope he will choose to do so before the election. If you missed Mitt Romney's appearance two weeks ago, you can watch the full interview on our website meetthepressnbc.com.

Yeah, Dancer, that's going to happen. He's dying to lock up that 50-year old shut-in/snarky political blogger demographic. Besides, why would he go on your show when he can get more visibility appearing over on CBS with former Fillmore Administration environmental correspondent Bob Schieffer?

Anyway, back to our delightful round table, with Brooksie throwing out the ceremonial first name-drop....

MR DAVID BROOKS: Yeah, you know what, a couple of years ago I had a chance to have dinner with Tom Clancy and he was enthusing over some gun he had just seen on a naval battleship.

Lucky you. Did you at least avert your eyes and hand him a warm towel when he was done? I also hope you didn't shake his hand when you left.

And I'm sitting there while he is talking, thinking, you can't fake it. If you don't really have the passion for those kind of guns, you can't write Tom Clancy novels. Mitt Romney does not have the passion for the stuff he's talking about. He is — he is a problem solver. I think he's a non-ideological person running in an extremely ideological age and he's faking it. So if I were him, I'd go to what he's been for the last several decades of his life. He'd be — be a power point guy. Say, I'm making a sales pitch to the country.

This will turn the whole thing around. Change from a completely insincere and transparently phony ideologue to an authentically devious and boring bond salesman. Treat the entire country like we're all sitting in a conference room, trying not to doze off, and looking at the last bearclaw on the pastry tray with unbridled lust in our eyes. That'll get Republican turnout down to about five. Of course, there's always Bay Buchanan, and her attic full of dusty political bat guano for an alternative. The Buchanan family always has the best interests of the poors — especially The Blahs — at heart....

Americans can't get off their dependency. And it's longer and longer, and it's going to be more and difficult. There're no jobs to get them out. What Mitt Romney offers to those Americans is a way, a ladder, to climb out of that mess...

Jesus, has this woman had an actual job in the past 25 years? Atlanta mayor Kasim Reed was there for rebuttal:

MAYOR REED: Honkies, please.

Okay, I paraphrased a little there. What he actually did was unlimber the greatest NASCAR analogy of all time:

He said he's like being a — a bad NASCAR driver on a rich team. He said no matter how good the car is, no matter how bad the pit crew is, the driver has got to drive the car. And this guy puts it on the wall every single time.

I expect Willard Romney to tell us after the election that his campaign ran well, but that he had a bad set-up. That's what every NASCAR driver says when things go wrong. They could drive out of the speedway and over a cliff into the sea, and they'd tell you he had a bad set-up. Anyway, just because of that answer, I would now vote for Kasim Reed for emperor.

Where were we? Undaunted, Brooksie continued to work his current obsession — that 30 years of crackpot conservative economics really was a poverty program, and that Willard is really St. Brigham of Assisi, and that he's working in the tradition of St. Jack of Tours and St. Ronnie of the Little Flower.

He's helped alcoholic Mormons. He's helped immigrants, frankly illegal immigrants. He's helped a lot of people. He's nursed kids who are dying. If you look at his private life. He gave four million dollars to charity in one year.... We know he has the perfect life story for a compassionate conservative campaign because he's lived that life. And what's — the problem is he's running a different campaign. George Bush, Ronald Reagan, Jack Kemp, they looked at people in the community colleges and they said, okay, maybe they're on food stamps, but they're taking two buses, they're working two jobs, they're going to school, and conservatism is how those people rise...

Yes, God must love the poors, because He's allowed cruel and stupid Republican economic policies to create so many of them. Struck dumb by the fact that his party has nominated a Walking Tax Avoidance Scheme for president, after so rigging the economic system for three decades that a Willard Romney was all but inevitable, Squint also sought refuge in the imaginary — and stunningly banal — past. His mind, apparently, is filled with conservative action figures....

We believe in smaller government because we believe, like Jack Kemp believed, like Ronald Reagan believed, like Margaret Thatcher believed that that's how you help the most people. I will say still without apology I believe a rising tide lifts all boats. I believe you unshackle individuals and they can prosper in this country. What's so disturbing about that video is like you said, David, Mitt Romney doesn't get it. He doesn't believe it. And that's what comes through. Margaret Thatcher, shopkeeper's daughter, would have never said that in a million years.

By all means, let's summon the shade of Mother Thatcher, who allowed elected members of Parliament to starve to death in order to prove how tough she was, as an exemplar of true political compassion. You know what else a rising tide does? It drowns everyone who doesn't have a fking boat, and those are the people sunk by the policies for which Scarborough seems so nostalgic.

Okay, that's enough of that. Let's move on along to CBS, where Bill Clinton stopped by to chat with former W. H. Harrison transition correspondent Bob Schieffer. Clinton decided to explain to Schieffer why the exaltation of nincompoops over on the other network all were full of beans....

I know a lot of higher income people, a lot of whom helped me do my work and they are supporting Governor Romney and a lot of people say things like that. But I think it is worth pointing out, if you look at that 47 percent, first they do pay taxes. They pay Social Security taxes. They pay Medicare taxes. They pay state and local taxes. Second, they are out of the federal income tax pool for two reasons. One is the economic crash, which lowered a lot of people's incomes. Even a lot of the newer jobs don't pay high incomes. Now the second reason is interesting. It's a bipartisan reason in the past. It's because the combined impacts of the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit.

I honestly believe that, if Clinton ran against Romney, Clinton would get 500 electoral votes, because three Canadian provinces would sign up just to vote in the election. Later, Bon had a panel on which sat the Magic Dolphin Lady Peggy Noonan, who recently has gone 15 rounds with Ann Romney and seems to still be on what the old fight guys used to call Queer Street. She is now given to imaginary dialogues....

And I would also add that an old hand on the plane would have said to him — to Mr. Romney as soon as Libya blew, Mr. Romney went out there and he tried to make some political hay of it. An old hand would have said, "Buddy, when Americans come under attack, the first thing you do is say we are praying for them; we are asking for unity; we will have no criticism right now for the president, but this will unfold; we will be thinking about it and we will be talking to you very seriously about it very soon.

First of all, let me just say for the record that the image of Peggy Noonan's talking about what "an old hand" might do is not an entendre that I care to double down on that early in the morning. And, second, here's the thing about Willard Romney that none of these mournful conservatives seem to get — he doesn't listen. To anybody. Ever. Why should he? He's smarter than everyone else in the room because he's richer than everyone else in the room. That's been the smile and the shoeshine that's gotten him through this golden life of his. Why should he stop now?

And we conclude over on ABC, where this week's episode of This Week With The Clinton Guy Shocked By Blowjobs, featured a screaming, poisonous dingbat who's gobbed up another book to peddle:

"I think what — the way liberals have treated blacks like children and many of their policies have been harmful to blacks, at least they got the beneficiary group right," Coulter said. "There is the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow laws. We don't owe the homeless. We don't owe feminists. We don't owe women who are desirous of having abortions, but that's — or — or gays who want to get married to one another. That's what civil rights has become for much of the left."